Cultivate Your Own Garden at the Painting Center

Ashley Garrett, No Exit — Ashley Garrett, photo courtesy of the artist

The exhibition “Cultivate Your Own Garden” curated by Patricia Spergel and Shazzi Thomas at the Painting Center features artworks by twelve contemporary artists whose work references garden and landscape in diverse sensibilities – traditional observational painting, narrative paintings with subtle political commentary, and paintings that lean more towards abstraction. Cecile Chong, Elisabeth Condon, Daniel Dallmann, Carlo D’Anselmi, Lois Dodd, Ashley Garrett, Xico Greenwald, Eric Holzman, Wolf Kahn, Judith Linhares, Carol March and Ruth Miller all share in their work a love for nature, paint, and rigor in transmitting that passion.

The exhibition gives the viewer a momentary respite from the relentless onslaught of the exterior world – its changing weather and its harsh politics. Carefully looking at these paintings may serve as a moment to pause, renew, and reflect inward. The idea of connecting to nature despite the cacophony of the world around us seems apt at this moment in history.